


you terrible thing (you beautiful thing)

by sapphicish



Series: hell or high water [3]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 02, ao3 PLEASE adjust your tags to suit my lilith/mary needs THANK you this is URGENT-
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-23 00:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18538462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: “You aren't very good at answering questions, are you,” Mary blurts out and then freezes, her hands curling quiet and scared against the table. She buries them in her lap again, rocking forward a little with the weight of what she clearly thinks is a mistake.Lilith laughs. “You just need to ask better questions.”





	you terrible thing (you beautiful thing)

**Author's Note:**

> i...GUESS this is a (loosely connected?) series where everyone talks about their problems now!
> 
> also i don't like calling her madam satan but i feel like i can't just call her lilith...the conundrum!

“Would you like some tea? It's Earl Gray. Or I have...”

“No.”

Lilith watches the flickering of Mary's eyes. She can see it in the light, all of it. They're seated in front of the fire, the room is horribly warm, and the schoolteacher won't stop tugging nervously at the collar of her sweater. Lilith knows exactly how she feels. Exactly. Down to the sweat she knows is slicking her spine, to the uneasy way she nibbles at the inside of her cheek – the left side, a little scarred over the years with all the chewing and biting she's done in moments of panic, stress, unease – and tucks her fingers into her sleeves, pulling and pushing and warring with herself. The cross hangs, ugly and golden and an awful, irritating symbol of her faith to her False God, above the hearth.

She is not in her body anymore, but Lilith knows what Mary is thinking, what she is feeling, what she wants to say and what she actually will say.

She's felt it all before, with Satan.

It isn't really a pleasant comparison, the two of them, Her and Him, the Mother of Demons and the Dawn of Doom and the Queen of Hell to Satan, to Lucifer, to the creature that lives forever trapped in the body of Nicholas Scratch.

The thought is even less so; the way she imagines Mary feels. The nerves and the scrambling mind and the clammy palms and the shaking, always the shaking.

She is Mary Wardwell's Satan.

Lilith wants to go that distance, to remove it from the equation completely. The table opens up a space between them that feels like a chasm, gaping and full of broken unsaid things. Mostly on Mary's side. Lilith is content to sit here until dawn and watch her old vessel, if allowed. She won't be allowed, but she would be content. She would be.

(She might also be content to drink the tea if Mary insisted; to help her tidy up around the house; to stop looking at the cross even though the sight of it the wrong way up makes her throat burn; to stoke the fire; to watch Mary breathe, in and out and in and out and in – out – in – out – until Mary says something like _why are you looking at me like that_ and Lilith will say _you're just so alive_ and they will look at each other and that will be that.)

“...delicious almond cookies,” Mary mumbles under her breath, voice dying in her throat like so many trapped insects, palms pushing between her knees so that she can stabilize the tremors running through her fingers and up her arms. It only works a little.

“Yes,” Lilith says suddenly.

Mary's head jerks, surprised, wide eyes falling on her face and then away away away, quick, a scurrying mouse. Mary is the mouse and Lilith is the cat, so on and so forth. It's a comparison that bores Lilith. They are equals. She doesn't say that because they aren't actually, because she is greater than any mortal, than any witch, than anyone who has ever lived or died or lived and died or been alive and dead at the same time.

But Mary is not the mouse and Lilith is not the cat. So.

“I'm sorry?” Mary's voice shakes.

“I'll take the cookies,” she says, smiles harmlessly with Mary's lips and Mary's mouth and Mary's voice. She knows it's unnerving. If she could, she would slip into something else, something real, something with needle-sharp teeth and stretching claws and a shadow that devoured and a maw that could open wide and wide and wider, jaw unhinged. But mortals will never be able to handle her true form – if they do not die outright then they will go mad, and there is no coming back from that.

Lilith doesn't want to drive Mary mad. That would defeat the whole purpose of all of this.

Three months have passed in Greendale and she has already returned from the underworld several times. Usually for Zelda Spellman, and now for this – for Mary Wardwell. She doesn't want to think about what that means; that she is here with a mortal, with someone who is _more_ than a mortal, with someone who does not know her and will never know her truly. Mary is not Zelda, High Priestess of the Church of Lilith, who whispers information on the growth of their cause very evening before bed. She is not Hilda Spellman, quietly praying that her sister recovers, and that her niece does the same, and that they are a whole and happy family again soon. She is not Sabrina Spellman, awkwardly calling out Lilith's name at the end of the night at least twice a week between well wishes, like Lilith is not the Queen of Hell and a woman she should show every bit of respect to but rather a very removed family member that she's hoping might visit soon.

Mary Wardwell does not pray to her, because she has no reason to.

There is a chasm there, too.

Lilith solves it easily enough: a mirror spelled to keep an eye on the cottage, but not to watch every motion of all of Mary's days, because the idea of doing things like watch her sleep feels revolting, something sacred broken. The mortal has earned her uninterrupted rest, the peace that Lilith has given her, the _forgetting._ And she doesn't need to watch, not all the time. She already knows all about the woman's routine: wake up at five-thirty, have breakfast—an egg white omelette and toast with butter and apricot jam (strawberry, once, but now all that red makes her sick)—and then drive in her old but well-loved car to Baxter High for the day. Teach. Speak to students, sometimes. Other times, look at the students look at her and think about what it means, the oddness in their eyes, the confusion, the weight she feels pressing at her heart and lungs. Have lunch. Usually a light lunch, or sometimes nothing at all. Keep going. When she comes home at the end of the day, she has a cup of tea to help her sleep, to ease her from the angry clutches of the strange, inexplicable nightmares she fails to understand the meaning of. She pairs that tea with a couple of her favorite cookies, unless she's feeling nauseous, in which case she replaces it with a couple of peppermints stashed away in a drawer and goes to bed especially early.

Since Lilith vacated the body, it has been nauseous very, very often.

(She takes choice memories with her, when she does vacate: thoughts of death, of Adam, of _the-girl-on-the-road_ and _the-scissors-in-my-throat-blood-gushing_ and _the-fiancé-I-love_ searched through and pulled easy like thread, free and free and free from Mary's full, bursting mind, and Lilith had replaced it with: it is no longer October of 2018 and you are Principal and you have seen the changes in the children around you and you are aware and you are missing no parts of yourself and missing no time and you are doing so well, Mary, you have done so well, I free you and return you and _love you._

Lilith does not understand Love the way mortals do, the way anyone does. She had loved him once – _him,_ Satan, Lucifer, The Devil, the one who sat on the throne that had belonged to her always – and she knows now or perhaps knew it all along that it was undeserved, stolen, forced, a gross and twisting thing that he took and took and took and took and _took and took and took_ —and, now, she knows enough about Love to know this: it is not something that rots sweetly in your mouth and burns all your life away. She does not know what it is exactly, but it is not that. Never that.)

So, no, Mary Wardwell doesn't pray to her, though there is a part of Lilith that selfishly, greedily thinks, _why not. Why not._ She only prays to one God, and even that is very infrequent – oddly so, for someone whose cottage is full to the brim with symbolism and religious texts. Lilith understands. Mary enjoys the idea of religion more than the practice. She wants to believe. She does not actually believe.

It is, as ever, a conundrum for these poor creatures.

“Oh,” Mary says faintly, standing and backing up towards the cupboard more than walking towards it, so that she can keep her eyes on Lilith. Lilith keeps her posture relaxed, her hands stretched out on the table, her body language open. She doesn't cross her legs or clasp her fingers like she wants to, because that would require sudden, easy, quick movement, and Mary would jolt with shock and fear and her heart rate would increase for eight seconds and she would be a little more scared than before. Again.

That's all happened six times already by her last count.

Lilith watches Mary's hands fumble with the cupboard, watches her finally give in to turning so that she can look for the cookies, even if she stops three times so that she can look over her shoulder to check if Lilith has decided to sneak up behind her and tear her spine from her body.

The very thought, amusing as it is, makes Lilith's stomach lurch in an uneasy way.

When Mary returns to the table, she does so with a familiar tin, setting it on the table between them and clearing her throat the way she does when she's nervous. She does many things when she's nervous. When Lilith had been in her body she had felt it, sometimes, an inexplicable urge to do things that she wouldn't do otherwise; and the opposite, when applying red lipstick or painting her nails or dressing, it had felt – almost – _wrong._

Lilith's will had overpowered the more obnoxious things eventually, of course, but the little things had remained. They're somewhat soothing to watch now, comforting to think of the idea that this woman – at her core – hadn't truly changed much at all in her absence.

“Thank you,” Lilith says in the mildest tone possible so that Mary won't feel threatened, even though she knows it will only help a little. She opens up the tin and pushes aside the crinkly tissue covering the surface, staring at the cookies inside. It's only been months, but time always feels strange in Hell, too quick or too slow, and it almost feels like it's been much longer since she's had these.

(Her predecessor's name is no longer spoken in Hell. Instead His servants become Hers; Her servants bring Her tributes of bone and blood and flesh, gold and silver and endless feasts stretching for miles, the title of _Queen_ chanted on their tongues. Her eldest children have statues carved in Her liking and erected in Her honor. It is enough. It is all enough. It feels better than anything Lilith has experienced, and She is the happiest She has ever been; but then She will be chewing her way through something vibrant and bloody in Her mouth and think _this would be better if it was something else._ So Lilith eats. And starves.)

“Um,” Mary says, nervous and twitching from across the table.

Lilith looks up, licking crumbs from her fingers, realizing that a minute or two has passed by the clock on the wall and she's already eaten eight of the cookies, not thinking that she could possibly take her time or break them in half or chew before swallowing and. Oh. Right.

She puts the cookie dangling from her fingertips down into the tin and, feeling strangely disappointed, moves to close the tin. “They're good,” she says dimly, wondering why she feels like she has to have an excuse to eat.

“You don't have to stop eating. I was just wondering if you'd...changed your mind about the tea. It goes very well with the...” Mary trails off when she notices Lilith staring, settles for gesturing weakly at the tin instead.

Lilith keeps staring for a moment—then, knowing that it terrifies Mary, to look so deeply and for so long into her own face knowing that it is so, irrevocably _wrong,_ looks away to the flames in the hearth. “I could go for some tea.”

Mary smiles shakily, pours the tea. Some of it sloshes over the sides of the second cup, and Lilith wordlessly offers her a towel to mop up the liquid.

“Thank you,” Mary mutters, head ducked, turned aside as if to make eye contact with Lilith would cause some sort of apocalyptic disaster.

Lilith isn't personally very invested in the thought of that sort of thing like her predecessor had been, but she doesn't say that. “I'm not going to hurt you, you know,” she says instead.

That works. Mary glances up at her, eyebrows twitching. Part incredulity, part surprise, part...fear. Of course. Lilith swallows down the sigh that threatens to leave her.

“Haven't you already?” Mary says.

Lilith stops short of reaching for another cookie, slowly drawing her hand back and putting it down on the table. “Have you remembered more?”

“Bits and pieces. Nothing concrete. It's why you're here. Isn't it? You know that I remember...some things.”

“No. I'm here because...” Lilith stops again, coming to the dull-edged and somewhat unsurprising realization that she doesn't know why she's here. Not exactly. It had been growing, that urge to come back to Greendale, back above ground – the way it grew whenever Zelda Spellman prayed to her with all that faith and hope in her voice and thoughts, the desire to meet with her again and again so that they could come to some sort of partnership almost overwhelming. Lilith shares that with her—there is much work to be done, after all, and if it's to be done they both have to be a part of it.

Mary is not Zelda. The urge to visit Mary is a sharp, painful pull at her chest rather than a quick, easy tug at her mind. She'd rejected it anyway, again and again, too busy dealing with rebellions and infighting throughout the underworld. It's easy to take a throne, not so easy to deal with what comes after. She'd realized early on that she didn't need the mirror. If she closed her eyes she could feel it, feel everything, like red strings tying them together even across separate planes. She doesn't need sight. Not really.

(Two months into Lilith's reign, Mary Wardwell tripped over a box of old things she'd been sorting through in her cottage and ripped the tender skin of her left knee open. Apart and together, so far away and so terribly close, Lilith had looked up from a meeting with her generals and felt her breath catch.

The week after that, Mary breaks a mirror—bad luck—and slices her finger open on the edge. In Hell, watching two hounds bite one another over the rights to the superior slab of raw, festering meat, Lilith closed clawed fingers against her palm and looked down expecting to see blood.

The week after _that,_ Mary has a dream and wakes up with her hand pressed against her rib cage. She falls back asleep and forgets all about the strange sensation of something missing. Lilith does not. Instead, on her throne, she presses a hand to her chest and feels something moving.

So, yes, it all proves fairly troublesome.)

“Because?” Mary prompts in a patient, hesitant tone that makes her snap back to reality, blinking until the orange glow of the fire dancing off of the woman's fantastic cheekbones sharpens in her vision.

“Because I want to be,” Lilith says plainly, shoving another cookie in her mouth. It's somewhat ungraceful – here she is, Queen of Hell, sitting in a mortal's home and eating her food and talking to her civilly and truthfully.

“You aren't very good at answering questions, are you,” Mary blurts out and then freezes, her hands curling quiet and scared against the table. She buries them in her lap again, rocking forward a little with the weight of what she clearly thinks is a mistake.

Lilith laughs. “You just need to ask better questions.”

Mary's shoulders relax a little, when neither the fire in the hearth nor the shadows in the corners grow to consume, when everything stays exactly as it is. Lilith isn't sure she likes it, all this fear, but either way she finds it fascinating—amusing even, though she keeps from admitting it aloud. “Do you want something from me?”

Lilith pauses. Thinks about it, or tries to, well and truly. There are many things she _could_ want from Mary, that she _should_ want, that she _would_ want. But none of it matters, really, because there's only one thing that comes to mind. “Yes,” she says, like petting a wild animal knowing somehow it won't bite, gentle like that, “yes, I do.”

Mary waits, and waits, and waits – then she clears her throat again. “What, then?”

“I will visit again. If you do not want me to come, tell me now or tell me then, and I won't return.” She licks almond-flavored crumbs from the tip of her thumb, knowing that the next time she licks something from her fingers it will be claws and it will be blood and the tongue will be grotesque and the room will be sweltering hot instead of pleasantly warm and there will be no golden crosses and no precious, fragile creature sitting across from her, clutching her cup close like it will help even when she knows it won't. “Invite me in when I arrive. Or don't. But until then, if you need me before that, call my name. I will hear you, no matter the time, no matter where I am, no matter where you are.”

“I don't know your name,” Mary says dimly, feeling faint and Lilith feels her feel faint, can feel the pulse running like a rabbit trapped under her skin, her blood rushing, her nerves set aflame with her hot, dazed confusion. Lilith murmurs a short word in Latin under her breath and listens for the calming. It comes slow but steady, and Mary sinks into her chair again, a heavy breath of relief slipping between her trembling teeth.

“Yes you do,” Lilith says. She's already been gone from Hell for far too long, but when she tells her body to move and stand and head for the door, it ignores her.

“Oh,” Mary says sharply, suddenly, a high-pitched quivering arch in her voice. “ _Lilith._ ” Like the name has been torn up through her throat from her guts. She's beginning to forget again, Lilith can tell, because those are the consequences of coming back here. Perhaps if Lilith had stayed put in Hell, Mary would recover. Keep forgetting. Be absolutely fine in every single way.

But Lilith would be worse off for it, and the whole point of coming here was the opposite. To fix _herself,_ not necessarily the vessel she used to take up residence in.

Lilith thinks, briefly, about how the name sounds coming out of a mouth that is not hers and has never truly been hers. About how it sounds coming from something long abandoned, a repository for her body and mind, a small and trapped thing who haunts her still after all this time, like some sort of revenge for how it had all started.

It sounds good.

It sounds right.

“Yes. That's the one. You will keep forgetting it—but you will keep remembering it, too.”

“I don't know what that means,” Mary says helplessly, on the verge of something. “I don't know what any of this means.” Her fingers are no longer clasped tight and trembling in her lap in a knot of flesh. Instead, her neatly-clipped nails rake along the inside of a wrist beneath her dark sweater, leaving angry red lines in their wake. Lilith can say _stop_ and Mary would, can say _calm down_ and she would. She can say anything at all in this moment and be obeyed, because that is what mortals do when in they're in shock and can't help themselves. They let other people do the helping, like the fearful little lambs they always, always are.

“It's all right,” she says instead, trying to be soothing. She thinks she misses the mark, just a little bit. “You'll learn.”

Mary stares at her, and Lilith counts the moments until, finally – _finally_ – those pretty blue eyes begin to flutter, then roll back into her head, and her hands relax, fingers unfurling as she slumps unconscious in her chair.

Lilith rolls her eyes, knowing all too well the weakness of mortals when it comes to stress. (She had not been prepared to slip into the body of a woman burdened with so much anxiety that it often threatened to overwhelm even _Lilith,_ but she'd managed. As always.) She stands and goes about setting things in order; she puts the tin of cookies away, finishes her tea even though she finds she loathes the taste, drags a blanket over Mary's lap—careful not to touch her in the process—and feeds the fire with her magic, puts out the candles and turns off the lamps and steps out of the cottage after taking her coat from the rack, pulling it on around her shoulders.

Lilith runs her fingers along the seam of the door after, listening to the click of the locks snapping into place, and then takes one last look around the outside of the cottage and into the deep, gnarled dark of the forest. Finally, she murmurs a thin, hard line of Latin under her breath, and returns herself to the heart of Hell.

Inside, Mary Wardwell's eyes snap open.

 _Lilith,_ she thinks, like the most sacred and terrified prayer, and a voice in her mind calls back to her.

It's the most beautiful and horrifying thing that she's ever heard.


End file.
